Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Ask Coriel: New Paladin Healer?

Cathak asks:

Been reading your blog for a few years now and Ive got bitten by the Healing Bug (IE, supporting my guilds raid as a Tank and a Healer). How exactly do I want to spec as a Holy Paladin, what should I Gem and Enchant for - should I just base what I do off your own armory profile? Additionally, as a brand new healer - should I go with a FoL or HL build?

I recommend going with a 51/20/0 build. It's almost identical to my build, only with Aura Mastery. AM is good, I just haven't gotten around to respeccing.

Gemming and Enchanting, it's easiest to go for Intellect, with Spellpower as a second choice. I like getting set bonuses, so I use SP/Int, Int, and Int/Mp5 gems, but many paladins just gem straight Intellect (with a couple of mult-colored gems to get your meta-gem bonus).

I suggest going with a Holy Light build. One of the things a new paladin needs to learn is not to be timid with Holy Light, but to be willing to use it a great deal, even if there is a lot of overhealing.

For Glyphs, I recommend Glyph of Holy Light, Seal of Wisdom, and Beacon of Light. I use Seal of Light to max performance on Valrithia Dreamwalker, but Seal of Wisdom is better for undergeared paladins.

I also like the BoL/SS tracker. It's really useful for tracking Beacon and Sacred Shield durations.

Other than that, paladin healing is just a lot of practice. Keep Beacon and Sacred Shield up on the tank, Judge as often as you can, use Holy Shock when you move, use Divine Plea early and often, and don't be afraid to bomb Holy Lights.

9 comments:

Glyph of Divinity is an option too. If you LoH yourself you'll gain more mana per fight than you would save with Glyph of Beacon of Light. I also like having my SS and Beacon on the same duration, but that's personal preference :)

yur set up is pretty much how I play my pally :) I just wanted to add one tip, I got fro ma friend the other day and it work wonders.

not to be afraid to stand in melee if possible and autoattack the boss/trash between casts. even if its just you judging light, seal of wisdom will regen a lot of mana with every white hit that connects. and if you judge wisdom? your mana regens faster then with divine plea, minus the reduced healing. I have no idea why this never occurred to me on my own (considering that I've used seal of wisdom for soloing), but I found it extremely helpful :)

My paladin is geared to the teeth (including val'anyr) and I still use glyph of seal of wisdom and a lvl 200 libram. There is no way to heal with holy light without those two.

I used to switch ro seal of light for valythria as well but my guild has gotten so good at managing the fight that the extra healing isn't needed and I stopped bothering.

The only thing wrong with glyph of divinity is that it wastes a really good tank cd. The damage reduction is very welcome on certain fights. Also, beacon saves a gcd every 3 minutes (2 beacons per 180 instead of 3).

It all depends what's limiting you - if tank death is a problem then LoH is a very strong CD (if you're specced for it - the healing I could care less about). I usually run with 1 or 2 other holy paladins, and between all our Aura Mastery, Divine Sacrifice, and Hand of Sacrifice cool downs I don't find myself needing a 4th tank damage mitigation all that often.

If mana is a limitation, you can't do better than divinity.

If you find yourself without free globals, then Glyph of Beacon will help with that. Honestly the only time I really feel the hurt from missing a global is in Heroic Saurfang or P3 Putricide.

One thing I can attest to, however, is that it never hurts to carry around multiple glyphs. If you have two competing glyphs (say SoW and SoL) get a stack of each and swap as necessary.

Oh - and one other thing. I only discovered this recently, but judging from 25 yards instead of 40 is almost never an issue. I've since taken a point out of Enlightened Judgements to fill out Imp BoW and never looked back. (Actually, for me it's Blessed Hands, but that's because Imp BoW is covered and I like using HoSac as a tank damage CD.)

I personally go with a build with several points in the retribution tree, such as http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sxA0gM0sVu0tgdxZVcbx. I never really felt I need the damage reduction talents (or at least not all paladins in the raid need them), and the improved crit chance both for the heals and the damage on the boss helps a lot as well. But apart from that, some solid advice in this thread.

You can use a single Nightmare Tear to activate a meta, the rest of your slots can be Int.

Divine Sanctuary is a great spell to have has holy. There are many instances when the raid will take a lot of damage and being able to reduce that by 20% is great. Won't show up in the meters, but it makes a difference to the amount of healing your team needs to do during those instances. Also, since you will be bubbled during these times, it will also guarantee you survive to keep healing afterwards.

Improved LOH is nice, don't save it for when the tank is low health, use it when you know the tank is about get hit with the hardest damage or that the healers will be scrambling around and heals might be spotty.

...And improved righteous fury reduces your personal damage by 6%. Considering the number of fights where the entire raid takes damage, that's a lot of saved heals. Just be careful with it on fights with add spawns.

Just to correct and add slightly to what BigHeals said, you don't need to bubble in order to safely put up divine sanctuary on the raid. Hitting a macro /cancelaura Divine Sacrifice /cast Divine Sacrifice twice in quick succession lets you use this cooldown every 2 minutes without needing to bubble. Another pointer is to remember to put up hand of sacrifice on someone sensible(usually the main tank) whenever you are obliged to bubble outside of an agreed cooldown rotation. No point wasting a strong cooldown.